


Overwhelm My Lungs

by Mirkstrolls (angrennufuin)



Series: First Kiss(es) [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fantrolls, POV Second Person, see notes - Freeform, some distressing themes and ways of coping?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 11:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21243116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angrennufuin/pseuds/Mirkstrolls
Summary: Your eyes keep getting caught by the soft curve of a lock of hair, or the way the light hits the line of his nose. Even astrung with jitters, he’s pretty like an old statue. You should tell him that you’re fine! And not distraught, which honestly you thought was a kind of medicine. But your mouth is an awful long way from your voicebox these nights; too long for words to travel, feels like. You just smile wide as a river, wide like sunrise, and hope he gets your meaning.But he just looksmoreworried now. “Look, I am sorry about your lusus.”  His brow wrinkles into little lines, he chews his lip. “If you are mad about it, you can just tell me.”Written in 2016 for a series of first kiss drabbles, refurbished a little recently. In this installment: unhealthy ideas about romance. Awe-inspiring miscommunication. Shut-up kisses that turn out better than anyone involved had a right to expect.Title from Of Monsters and Men's "Winter Sound."





	Overwhelm My Lungs

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up, this is a slightly less romantic and more questionable situation than those previous, because Alternia; it's not particularly graphic, but I thought I'd warn for it anyway. The gist is that someone kills someone else's sentient animal parental figure, and the someone else kisses them anyway. If mentions of blood/death/dissociation/bad power dynamics/emotionally dubious reasons for a 14-year-old to kiss another 14-year-old bother you, I would skip this one.

> **Videle Rennis**  
6.5 sweeps//14ish Earth years  
_Southern Alternian Community Centre_

The big main room is almost empty today, you notice when you start thinking again. 

You musta walked here, though you don’t remember doing it – you’re standing just inside one of the doors, leaning on the wall, looking out over the couches and tables and plain metal walls. There’s a scatterful of other trolls here, but they’re not ones you know in anything but name: they’re mostly just talkin’ quietly. A few are playing games in a corner. Someone’s rattling around in the kitchen. It’s so funny! Everything’s going on just exactly the same. And you guess it _ is _ the same! It could be almost any other night in the last couple perigees since you started hanging out here. It’s just… just you, who feels strange.

You’re trying to ignore it and act normal, but sometimes, when you turn your head too fast, you can smell smoke in your hair. Which is _ridiculous_. You washed your clothes twice and your own self three times, scrubbing your roots with mint stems ‘til your fingers ached. Smoke’s a tricky thing, but you _ must _ have gotten it all out. 

You check over your hands and your braid and your feet, just to be sure. But yes, see: there’s no soot, no blood, you washed it all clean off. It’s always _ very _ important to clean up after yourself.

Only… oh, only, did you clean the walls?

A dull ache starts up in the back of your head. There were lots of bloodsplatters, big arcs and little splashes both, all through the entry hall and worse in the habitation block. Green as ivy leaves. Green as you. You can remember them photo-perfect, and you didn’t clean them up and they’re still there and someone will _ know _ and that dull ache is getting _ louder _ now, and you can hear it’s the echo of a scream: _ Vide, Vide, VIDE _, so loud it woulda burst your eardrums if it had come through your ears at all and not inside your head. 

But now your hands are starting to shake and your breathing’s starting to quicken. Someone a million miles away goes, _ Hey kid, you okay_, and you bob your head up and down until you think she’s done looking at you. _ This is stupid_, you tell yourself firmly. Nobody’s going to look in your hive, nobody will see the blood. You always get yourself so worked up over silly things! It’s really better not to think of them at all.

And ‘sides, your thoughts are already scattering, like it was hard for them to even hold together that long. Your breathing evens out, the scary memories get pushed into a little box that you don't have to open if you don't want to. You feel… not tired, exactly! But dreamy and loose and vague. So you lean back against the wall, and you let your thinkpan go floaty. 

Later, who knows how long: “Vide?”

You look up (and _ up_) into worried eyes, gray-and-cerulean like the daytime sky through clouds. Jerath! Your friend Jerath, with his flowy hair and those kind eyes in a highblood-handsome face. Makes your heart twist ‘round in your chest to see him fret, ‘specially when you know his rare little smile suits him so much the better. Weren’t you meant to be looking for him? You had something to say, you thought.

“Vide, are you okay?” He hovers awkwardly next to you. “You look… distraught.”

Your eyes keep getting caught by the soft curve of a lock of hair, or the way the light hits the line of his nose. Even astrung with jitters, he’s pretty like an old statue. You should tell him that you’re fine! And not distraught, which honestly you thought was a kind of medicine. But your mouth is an awful long way from your voicebox these nights; too long for words to travel, feels like. You just smile wide as a river, wide like sunrise, and hope he gets your meaning.

But he just looks more worried now. “Look, I am sorry about your lusus.” His brow wrinkles into little lines, he chews his lip. “If you are mad about it, you can just tell me.” 

You aren’t mad at him. For a sec, you don’t even know what he means.

Then you remember green blood splattered on your habitation block wall. You remember the great shriek no one else could hear, but still set your nose to bleeding and your feet to running home, home, home. _ Vide_, she’d screamed, when she hadn’t never called you anything but your full name or _ child _ afore that. 

Your lusus is a snake bigger round than you are and near four meters long. It hadn’t been easy to shift her with your skinny little arms, not when she didn’t-- when she couldn’t-- couldn’t move her own self--

You shouldn’t think about this. You smile at Jerath.

“Your guardian?” he says, like he thinks you didn’t hear or didn’t get it. “Oracle. She is dead, Vide, you do know that, right?” He pauses. Takes a deep, shaky breath. Goes on. “I had to do it. It was terrible and I am sorry, but I had to do it. Do you understand?”

_ Do you understand? _ You’re trying! Your thoughts fly away the second you try to lay hands on ‘em, but you’ve just got to try harder.

See, nights and nights ago, before you woke up with echoes in your skull, Jerath came home with you to meet Oracle. You’re pretty good at reading people, on account of how that’s what makes you not get culled, and you knew right off that they didn’t like each other. Well, fine: Oracle doesn’t like anyone. He’d been polite! And she’d not been, but she didn’t bite neither, so it shoulda been okay. But when they looked at each other, their stares were broken glass and poisonous thorns: him uncomfortable around her, her thinking he was up to no good with you. The both of them reeked of distrust and fear and anger, the kind of simmering mess that said, _ We’re gonna meet again soon, when we don’t gotta be so civil_. You’ve seen that kinda look before, and you could tell it was for real. Could tell that if it wasn’t Oracle’s body you dragged out of the hive and pyred, it would have been Jerath’s, and then you’d be even more cullbait than you are now. Getting orphaned’s something the culldrones might overlook, but someone like you (or like your lusus) killing a smart highblood like Jerath? No. No way. Just the thought of that, of his cloudy-day eyes with no light behind them, it hollows your chest out something awful. _ It would hurt_, you think distantly. _ It would have hurt an awful lot worse than this. _

_ Wouldn’t it? _

You do understand, anyway! He had to kill her or she would have killed him, you know she would have, she’s – _ done it before? No, stop thinking about it – _she’s like that, always has been. And ain’t that just the way of the world? You kill or you die unless someone’s looking out for you. You get it. You don’t blame him.

But Jerath’s still talking, tripping over his words, earnest and anxious, eyes fever-bright and and sweat standing on his forehead. He says your lusus was controlling, he says she was cruel, he says it wasn’t good that she never let you leave home for long. He says lots of things. You don’t hear most of ‘em. Instead, you watch his lips move and the light glitter off his dagger-sharp tusk and think about how if he’s right (and he must be, don’t bluebloods always know best?), you’re real lucky he came along to protect you from her. Your head feels floatier than ever, and your heart pumps so slow that you can count the breaths between each beat. But at last your wandering ears snag on a phrase – _ duty to the greenbloods _ and then something about a matespritship and _ finally _ you can get your mouth working. “Huh?”

“Your matespritship with Seirios, of course,” he says, as if that’s something you ought to be knowing of, and then he plunges on into more stuff you don’t attend to.

You’re too busy trying to work out if that _ is _ something you ought to be knowing of. Sei is a good friend, of course! Your first friend in ever so long; you met him before even Jerath. But you’re pretty sure you’re not his matesprit! First of all, he’d have to be in love with you, flushed-wise, and he can’t be. You woulda noticed a thing like that, for sure. And anyway: “I’m not in love with Sei,” you say, shocked and flat, heedless of how Jerath’s still talking. 

He knows that, doesn’t he? Maybe he was joking, you don’t always get his jokes. Jerath – Jerath with his secret li’l smile he don’t show just anybody, Jerath who tried to teach you how to swim, who fought Oracle (_Oracle!_) for your sake, and why would he do that if he didn’t want–

But this disbelief and dismay starting on his poor dear face say you’ve messed something up dreadfully, _ again_. Are you matesprits with Sei, even without knowing it? You duck your head fast, but you can’t unsee that look and you can’t unhear the dry, dry tone of his voice as he says, “Well. That certainly invalidates a recent murder.”

“Oh, but–”

No good. He cuts you off and you duck again. You hear plain as sunlight: _ you’re so stupid, Vide, you don’t know _ anything_, don’t mess up plans smarter people made for you. _ You hear: _ I don’t have time for this sort of inconvenience, stop being so immature_. One of your shoulders is already hunching up to try and ward off the yelling.

But you’re forgetting; this is Jerath. He’s never yelled at you before, and he isn’t now! He’s just _ talking _.

“But I suppose it is all for the best anyway.”

“Yes,” you blurt, “but–”

“Now you can have whoever you like as your quadrants. So even though that may not be Seirios, there is room for someone else to–”

“But, Jerath–” You’re not ungrateful. You’re _ not_, and if he’d just _ listen-- _

“–and she will have no say in it. Which is, of course, how it should be. Why she ever considered her opinion relevant, as lusii are _ not _ trolls–”

“_J__erath_,” you say, frustrated. He talks so much! Words on words on words, and all of them too many and too fast for your shaken-up head. You’ve heard him talk for hours when he really gets going, and if he does that, you won’t be able to tell him what you meant about Sei and that would be wrong, wrong, wrong! You have to– need to– do _ something _.

Jerath’s cheeks are cool under your hands, and you can just reach them if you stand on the very tip of your tiptoes. This close to, he smells like seawater and cold, dark-season winds and piney resin. ‘Course, you don’t know what you were planning to do now you’re so close. Anybody else you’d just pap his cheeks gently, soothe that wild look in his eyes, but – you can’t, not that, not with him, it would be the worst kind of wrong when you’ve _ met _ his moirail, you’ve met the Lady Ezzi, _ she’s _ supposed to be doing that, and anyway, you want – you want –

Your brain, slow as syrup, doesn’t know _ what _ it is you want. Not until your lips are already on his.

Three long heartbeats, you kiss him.

He doesn’t kiss back.

And that’s – oh. You thought, way he smiled at you, you _ thought _ – but Jerath’s a highblood. How could you hope to know him? Now’s when he yells, or… or slaps you clear ‘cross the room for the presumption. But no, not that last bit. Some little rational voice in you says, _ Jerath would never hurt me. _ Perfectly certain, like knowing the moons are green and pink. _Jerath’s never even _ yelled _ at me, he wouldn’t never. _

All the same, you step back quick, peer up at him through your lashes. “’M sorry,” you say, and then add hastily, “Sir. It’s just, you talk a lot, and I wanted to tell you something, only I guess I just did…”

Jerath isn’t saying anything. You don’t quite dare look him in the eye. Maybe he won’t hit you, but this silence, this _ stillness _ is _ worse _. A giddy laugh wants to bust out of you – you got your wish, Vide! He sure is hushed now!

You hurry on, wringing your hands, trying not to think about how his skin felt under your fingers. “Um! I kind of thought maybe you felt the same, but maybe you don’t, and that’s okay! I don’t, um, I don’t wanna be any trouble, I can go away, I’m sure you’d rather–”

You sense him moving forward, but you’ve barely time to look up before he catches you by the arms and kisses you back. And it’s – he has to lean way down and you have to lean way up, but you don’t notice because it’s… running along a high cliff-edge with the wind in your hair. Splashing your face with cold, cold water. The fizzing under your skin when you heal someone, but without the aching emptiness after. Like that. It shreds right through all that cobwebby vagueness you’ve been floating in; your heart is a fluttering bird in the cage of your ribs and somehow you’re clinging to the front of his shirt, and you are so, so awake. So, so alive.

When you finally pull apart for breath, someone in the block gives a rude whistle, but Jerath is still holding you – so gently, like you’re something precious and fragile – and you can’t spare any thoughts for anyone else. You kiss him again, feather-light, and touch the ends of his hair with the very tips of your fingers. It’s the softest thing you’ve ever felt.

You could stay like this forever, with his arms around you and your own self tucked up against his chest, but Jerath can’t. Standing this close, you can almost _ hear _ his great big thinkpan whirring away; sure enough, he carefully disentangles himself from you and looks you in the eyes. “Are you sure,” he whispers, “that this is what you want?”

You nod, because you’ve never been so sure of _ anything _, and then whisper, “Are you?” 

He goes to touch your face, hesitates, lowers his hand again. “I am worried, Vide. When I… when I slew Oracle–” his voice cracks, trying to say her name. “–she made me take a solemn vow, that I would protect you in her place. Keep you from all harm. I swore to do that, Vide, and I will do it. But if we… if we become matesprits, that complicates things.”

“It does?” _ What if he doesn’t want me anymore, what if I’m too much trouble, what else can I do– _

“Of course it does!” His brow’s all wrinkly again. “I, we, you opening yourself up to me like this, it gives me the power to hurt you. I care deeply about you, and that has not changed, but I am a clumsy fool and–”

You put your fingers over his mouth to stop up his words. It’d almost be a moirail’s touch, but the shiver that runs through both of you from horns to toes ain’t a conciliatory shiver, not at all. “You’re not a fool,” you say, firm. “And I _ know you_, Jerath Harjax, you’d look after me. You wouldn’t never hurt me.” _ He wouldn’t never_, agrees that little rational voice.

He takes your hand gently, moves it away from his mouth. “Not _ intentionally _, but, Vide, I have never had a matesprit before. I might do something, or say something…” He trails off, looking so miserable that you feel a prickle of tears at the corner of your eyes. “I could not bear it if I caused you pain.”

“I’ll be fine!” The tears are welling up now, and you blink hard to keep ‘em down. “I’m– I’m stronger than you think I am, I can take it. Be–besides,” you add as the idea hits you. “It’d cause me _ more _ pain to hafta go without you.” You sniffle a little, smile up at him. You've never been good at words, but your smile -- you've heard your smile is pretty. “I haven’t had a matesprit before neither, but… if you want to, we could figure it out together?”

There’s a long moment of silence, ‘cept for your pulse hammering away in your ears and the far-off noises of the other trolls in the block. 

Then Jerath says slowly, “If you are sure…”

“I _ am _ sure!”

“Then.” He takes a deep breath, and you realize suddenly that he’s nervous, maybe more nervous than you’ve ever seen him. “Shall we, ah… be matesprits?”

You give a little squeak of joy and jump into his arms; he catches you, just like you knew he would, and spins you around so that your braid flies out behind you in a wide, wide circle. It’s not ‘til you stop that you realize you’re laughing with sheer joy and relief – _ I am safe and he loves me and I love him! _ – but it’s okay because Jerath is smiling too, in a way that lights up his whole face and sets his eyes to sparkling, and you just have to kiss him for that.

“I take it that is a yes?” he asks, all mischievous and grinning, and you nod so hard that some of your hair flops into your face. Then you kiss him again, just to be sure, and _ he _ laughs this time – not a mean laugh, but a happy one.

When he sets you down, he keeps an arm around you. He holds you, his fingers resting light on the bones of your hips as if he’s afraid you’ll shatter if he holds too tight. The floaty vagueness is gone from your head -- you don’t feel like you’re anywhere else but here, in the arms of your matesprit (your _ matesprit_!). In the back of your mind, you can still see flickers of blood and smoke, still feel a faint worry of _what am I gonna do, where am I gonna go_, but it doesn’t matter much anymore.

You are safe.

He loves you.

You love him.

Everything will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Jerath's creator wrote [his POV of events](https://runictrolls.tumblr.com/post/155139674364/hey-lets-read-about-vide-and-jeraths-first-kiss), which is even more awkward, _somehow._


End file.
